Ode to a Blind Prophet

    by   shaun     lawton   

 Picture this and how difficult it is getting wizened

to try and convince them of the way that it is and why

Of course you can after being put here by plan

not just to refute the word of god but that of man 

As independent thinkers we try to prove the word

to non-believers on their own terms that it isn't absurd

In order to achieve this it's really kind of mysterious

It was made necessary for us to not be so delirious

To remain in possession of our very own minds

I'm not a Parrot in the Pulpit I think you will find

Only in this manner may it truly be convincing and

It's a small price to pay to be thought of as a Judas

For I am the Trick Joker and I'll be out smoking them
From their own caves I ain't joking I'll draw them up

I am his son just like every other last one of you

Only I believe it because I'm not making this up

It's true I first learned it on the way to the water's edge
Swore I heard the River laughing at me in my Cage

I'm the post-hypnotic Magi the self-corrective mirror
A quintessential Tragedy in laughter disappearing

To the White Eye missing I am the Black Button
Push me once again and we'll see who's hunting

There will be your proof when I am gone and all
But for the one simple thing it's Nothing but a Fall

I got the gnostic agnostic rap a-goin' and a-flowing
In the upper stratosphere like a luxury Boeing

Good knowin' ya as we breathe in the same minted friend
and breathe out our exhalations to mix in with the wind

Lucky for us this whale's got fins it swallowed us whole
and we'll be spat out again cuz we're all Jonas in the end

We're all Jesus we're all Judas the great Hermaphrodite
sees right through us all the less mighty once divided

Upon an uncoiling time in a revolutionary whiplash 
spun out of control to ride the crest of a wave crash

You can't resist my pathogenic attack it's doxological
It deals with ontology both micro- and macrobiotic

Don't look at me like I'm awful or idiotic you started in with  
either this or that binary logic with a pretty narrow slit

To be seeing through if you don't mind my saying so
and if you do never mind pardon it's all good I would too 

We're just at opposite ends of the double-slit experiment 

fractured and infiltrated on a dead wing suffering detriment 

To be cont. on another day when inspiration's resurrected

and I don't forget to run out of things to say when misdirected

Portings and Paintals

 by  Long Shotten

      'Twee the portals of the frameworks beyond the filigree, t'worn and t'wisted as if wished away on a twister, in a rolling sea of perpetuity and cresting chances, and avalanches of opportunities crushed under one another in a falling concussion from rocks on up high, cascading in cannonballs of exploding steam, refracting droplets of rainbow shattering dream, leaving reflections behind the curved lenses of eyes struck in wide open dilation from the incoming beams of light. 

       Welcome to my gallery of dreams.  It's one small mirrorlike seed reflecting a host of seeds around it, each a reflection of another tiny identical seed looking like a miniscule obsidian teardrop that when zoomed into reveals an ever opening succession of galaxies filled with mirroring seeds repeating the dazzling reflections phenomena in a self blinding concussion of brightness expanding into further shades of blinding white from which deep within a pinpoint of shadow arises like a lonely period at the end of a long lost sentence left unremembered for millennia. 

       The golden filigree remains a fractal of the uncurling whole, just one strand from a rare metallic fiddlehead rendered from the vine lost to the winds of time.  It's been said to have formed itself one particle at a time in an elaborately wrought performance which renders the framework of the portal itself as a representation of passageways which lead to the development of another world rendered from the endless succession of seeds built into a grand filigree curling into an elaborately wrought framework.   

   

     

          

Conjuring Kafkaesque

   by  shaun lawton 

    It may have been conveyed by the singular countenance of a popular actor, someone whose name was on the end of everyone's lips when they traveled the circuit of late night television talk shows as a guest when certain other A-listers couldn't make the grade. A composite of Boris Karloff and Gene Hackman with a quarter pastiche of Martin Short for good measure, they were the darling of the Frank and Rita Mae Henson scene all the way down the line, twisting up pinners on a side line and one then more one hitters at the parties to while away the afternoons, and when it came to the harmonica a real slide blues player all along. There was always a real Big Brother feel to the proceedings, a sort of John Hurt sensibility they brought to their roles, a naked sort of raw American essence not able to be captured in letters, but exemplified in glorious two-toned panoramic Kodachrome widescreen grandeur. The motion painting of history merges through cinema in a torrid outpouring of impassioned human desire and ambition. 

  

    The panorama has long been subsumed by the cloud it is stored in. The perpetual rainy days are more than a repeated video loop motif, they're an ingrained byproduct of shared reality browsing. Trends and agglomerations generate similar minded material the consumer replenishes with even after having been regurgitated. The sense of branching off into an alternate future limb of our universe settles in its grip over the long term.  It can only be measured in and thus felt and expressed in terms of decades. 

    There was an elemental fashion to it we can never afford to forget. 

   This book marker conjuring Kafkaesque memoirs as if they were fading screenshots 

  of a newly televised world falling into fruition along with our postmodern condition has been left to note the point we broke off thinking about it. 

Face Night Fear Flight

 

  Why escape Earth to colonize Mars? 

 The answer appears to be partly wrapped up

in fear and weakness. We should ask ourselves:

Why  not stand our ground, unite, and clean up 

this mess we made on our own planet?

Because it takes strength and courage to be

• open and impartial, tolerant, easygoing, receptive,
• neutral, calm, and unprejudiced. 
• Whereas fear and weakness breeds
• close-mindedness, bias, intolerance,
• tension, provocation, agitation,
• prejudice and resistance. 
•  
• 
  
• 
  

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Ceremony of Revival

by  Shaun Lawton 

   The singularity may not be defined, only experienced.  The double-bladed sword of truth cannot be honed any sharper than it already happens to be. It's cutting edge may only be maintained, and the AI revolution will certainly accomplish that much, to state the very least. 

   The best response to this latest technological paradigm shifting us further into the eye of the so-called technological singularity would be to rejoice at this sudden renaissance of cultural perspective.  Let us sing a paean to the latest revolution, instead of shrinking like violets in fear of it. If you are an outsider artist or creative individual, your time has come to shine once again. 

   Standing out from the crowd today has never been easier considering the extent to which the multitude of ignorant masses flock to social media streams to engage in the ongoing superficial debate concerning the potential affect that AI software development might have on shaping the course of our lives and their world. 

   There's nothing new to see here, of course; it's just the same old division between certain objects falling into the wrong or right hands, presumably. Remember that virtually any tool may be used as a weapon, and so the battle that began as a diversion once upon a long time ago may now flower into an altogether new configuration.  

    It's the same old war, a Xerox copy of the corresponding game, a carbon-clone of the same old drone. While all the moths are drawn toward the source of the burning flame, the rest of us can go outside and admire the flowers in the rain. When beauty exists in the eye of the beholder, it's easy to forget the greatest blessing of all often blinds us with its exquisite transcendental vision.  

   Some things are too beautiful for most human beings to recognize, for example death itself. Why don't you try that on for size. Machines may appear as if they might never die, but they very well may come to rust and just stop functioning. You and I, on the other hand, are human beings which happen to be a very unique form of machine. When our lives end, no one's left to know what happens. 

   There's nothing left for us to do but to transcend. The boundless allure of death may be appreciated while drawing in our first or final breath. Time itself may be measured by the constant rate of blood flowing through our veins.  Close your eyes and be at rest, and listen for the sound of far off trains,  knowing we are truly blessed.  

     

   

   

The Great Subway Gallery in the Sky

 synthograph  &  text    by     shaun lawton 

      Entering 2023 might as well be compared to  having virtually manifested in a surrealist gallery like I've finally coalesced into a sort of fully materialized being... and then when I woke up in the morning after a restful sleep, having only tossed about for a more comfortable position with my pillow arrangement a couple of times during the night, I felt a calling begin in the core of my gut. In doubled over remembrance, I seemed to recall that the walls of the museum seemed to be sky blue.  I felt like I was suddenly standing behind a cathedral window, dreaming of you. The light streaming in was tinged copper and gold from the radiance of the sunset outside. The gallery I was in was designed to appear as if it were the inside of a gigantic subway car. Lights passed by in consecutive flashes in between lapses of darkness all the while flickering with pale illumination across the interior of the gallery room.  Revealed in lurid flashes of strobe lit development, it created the illusion we were in the frames of a disintegrating movie, in between flashes of lightning that seemingly turned into flames which then resembled tongues reaching out into fallen leaves that drifted to the gallery floor, grasping for purchase which never came as they sank beneath the surface as if into a tar pit. Upon the flattened glossy reflective marble  the flames fanned in the distance like slowly rippling leaves, in development like bad weather lining the edges of the trees as the forest receded into the misty haze under blue gray skies vanishing into nothingness while white clouds began to darken on the horizon. 

   

Fractal Self Reflection

Trapped in the midst of a reflexive holographic error we freeze

Parsing what's between us completely off by refracted degrees

Glimpsing with a cough exactly what the other side sees

Chalking it off as nothing more than our enemy's disease 

Suffering under the added weight of a conflation of information 

Blame flies like iron filings to their preconceived destination 

Keep pointing your fingers at each other during this conflagration 

Bend over and conduct each other's proctological examination 

Chalk xenophobia off as yet another symptom of paranoia 

Along with ignorance and a host of other maladies for ya 

Each of which has lent its share of momentum to the foyer 

Setting off the perfect storm to immolate old growth sequoias 

Let this lesson remain clear in focus right before your eyes 

Withhold judgment instead of adding to the climate of lies

Suspend your disbelief before another swath of people dies

Consider humanity with your heart in order to grow wise 

I Am Lucky a Synapse

 

I am lucky a synapse didn't publish a tree.

 I mean there's a degree of certain 

luck to it. The thought emerged

 from the forest. The razed fields burnt and 

plundered over again. Tilling the earth of blank pages 

 to fertilize what ground could be found 

luckily a synapse formed into being 

  into a certain cohesion and took shape

 I am lucky the synapse didn't publish a time.

Another brane of existence to wrap around mind.

  What are the chances of not forming from there

 I'm lucky a synapse didn't publish a bear. 

   There's a certain degree of luck to it. 

   The waters boiled into steam and blown

  Away by the wind, how lucky a synapse 

Didn't publish someone else, like a friend

  How would I have come to fit in 

 There's not a chance I'm the one 

 Invited to the dance I am lucky a synapse

didn't produce the faculty to avoid me.

I am lucky a synapse didn't publish a tree.

post-pop desolation

 by Shaun Lawton

As the tides from space 

  ineluctably draw in and out 

 of our atmosphere

We are licked and caressed 

 by languorous exhumations 

from the void

If we could tune in on that distillation 

  of disconsolate wavelengths

 Ushered into the breathtaking inhalation 

of the yawning gulfs

Our focus would sharpen 

into a lucid high contrast revelation

As the pores of our skin opened 

  and shut in eyeless observation

 Sensing the crack and tolling 

of thunder in a woeful intimate proximity

Realizing the sudden lightning flash 

  equated to the bright days of our life

Not seeing the fulmination 

  for the electromagnetic spectrum 

In blind recognition of the moment 

 being the body of the beast

Its tensed musculature comprised 

 of the neural pathways in our brains

Ready to pounce in an instant 

on the cusp of the riptides of eternity

Each sip of our morning coffee 

  a conflagration of silent turbulence

To mirror and be echoed by 

 the tempest from our coronal solar wind

For a few short moments 

  with eyes lowered shut 

 in ecstatic concession

We breathe in the turmoil 

  captured inside the center 

of the eye of peace

Plasma Tales: Plasma Press's Prose Poetry Series

 Click here or on image below to purchase Plasma Tales # 1

   So there we have it,  the latest proof edition finally arrived today - (after 20 days being shipped and re-routed through our complicated mailing system) - and it looks good enough for me to approve for global distribution.    Click.

   I like the squared off retail price tag of ten dollars.  It's the next iteration of the "hotcakes for a dollar" scheme, you know: sell a million of those, make a million dollars. Okay so that only worked with pet rocks.  See all I gotta do is sell a hundred thousand of these. Never mind me. Likely I'll quickly streamline into subscription services, that's the reading wave of the present moment (we'll go ahead and call it: also thought of as "the future").    

   So you don't follow. So what.  Words are the new pet rocks.  You don't even have to paint eyes on them.  And they appear veritably, virtually, visibly on all  of our dVices.  I'm going fishing in the real world now. My words and poems are just the shiny bait. Just you wait. Set your iWatch on it. I'm a hook and reel y'all in.   Readers of the world, take note.  

   The lure's been triggering me into reacting as of late. Things are balancing out for me. I can't wait. I have to just keep on hanging in there. Working already on the Plasma Tales # 2 manuscript. Need to meet the deadlines to go to press by August. 

   The back of this 1st issue states: 

The first volume in a series of forthcoming books

exploring the electromagnetic dynamics between prose

and poetry. Begin your collection with Plasma Tales # 1.

Featuring a full color illustration on the front cover by 

the author. Dive into fantastic realms conjured by 

words that flow into adjoining stories which cast their

flickering illumination upon haunted passages further

down the torrential output of time. Stay tuned for 

Plasma Tales # 2 coming later in the summer of 2021.

   This has become my publishing imprint Plasma Press's next objective.  To put out the subsequent installation in the Plasma Tales "comic book without pictures" series of perfectbound chapbooks. People never ask me, "So what's Plasma Tales all about?"  but if they did, I'd tell them "Think of a comic book, but without any pictures on the inside. Just words. But every cover has a wicked full page painting or illustration (that serves as that issue's sole frame). In time, as more issues pile up, the series of images the various covers produce will continue to support and help accentuate the underlying themes being addressed by the poems and stories inside. It's like, each cover is the frame in a meta graphic novel, and the page count of each book represents the number of words accompanying that frame.   

   It doesn't have to makes sense to anyone or be explained, really. I only need to determine the frequency of this prose poetry series: how many issues will be published per year? Quarterly's more realistic but I'd hope I could shoot for ten.  Nine months of the year I could plan on putting out one a month, roughly. Under the heat of this constant pressure, they'd be hewn into a sort of corroborative shape and feel.  And the remaining three months of the year I could work on the tenth issue.  The special one that really re-draws all the interconnective lines running through the series. That way for every ten issues you at least get one where you might pretend it was worth buying.  Okay so I'm joking and getting a bit ahead of myself, here. 

   Of course each and every one of these issues should contain enough wild and interesting poetry and flashes of micro fiction for a whole new generation of super busy multi tasking shorter attention span geniuses to readily absorb in between their own steady upstream excursions making it out there in this rapidly evolving new world. As much as I myself remain addicted to the collection of print books, I have to admit the future of reading ripe for the reaping seems to me to take place from the eyes of a legion of growing young minds eager to devour by the hour whatever enticing stories they can see flashing by on their stream.  That is why Plasma Press will devote itself to producing its line of titles in the three most readily available formats: print, eBook, and Audiobook.   

   It's just about making reading fun again and by that yes I do mean being led down a twisting corridor of passages to send the mind reading them reeling on a dimensional trip beyond the stars to a realm even realer than the one we already imagined ourselves to be in.  Of course its the same one, but what are the chances. Exactly. 

BUY ISSUE # 1 of PLASMA TALES HERE:

by Shaun A. Lawton

Stars

 Like waves crashing on a beach 

faces sinking into the murk 

amid shafts of sunlight below

thriving green stagnant ponds

phantoms of angler fish merging

into fading profiles of Maya kings

legion drown into the scintillating murk

overseen by the eye of a cephalopod 

or is that a spider exactly the wind

hisses over diamantine droplets 

you're just conjuring a host of names

the human heart a polished mineral 

making contact along the circuit

breakers sinking like a rosary 

dropped from the deck of the Titanic

the demonic wreaths of coral gardens await

O, green whale, eagle of the depths 

spilling incense taking turbulent shapes

of faces mirrored along the crown of eyes

shredding into angels of birds 

the Ancient of Days reflected in stellar parallax 

within a quadrant of time reaching out 

for the heart of a burial into rebirth staring 

back from the well fed wide open hole

Shuttle Loom

correctors of the  communion  in asteroids  

slipped into inception across sporadic aqueducts

  rejecters  of the commonplace  occurring 

stepped intact  within intaglios  of instance

foot steps marked  in  orbital halos 

  the dance of a  host   advances annually

prepared in fact  to untangle the distance 

  between  that which we are  and proximity

the evidence  weighed in  long ago on sands 

  streamed in from  a hole opened up  above 

 funneling in most of the others on their hands

and knees in deference  to the sense of compact 

feelings  of love and acceptance amid the defiance

 have been struggling  to  just be  considered 

for a momentary suspension of judgment 

 spun out on  the day's fly wheel  

  

         

Fractal Self Reflection

Trapped in the midst of a reflexive holographic error we freeze

Parsing what's between us completely off by refracted degrees

Glimpsing with a cough partially what the other side sees

Chalking it off as nothing more than our enemy's disease 

Suffering under the added weight of a conflation of information 

Blame flies like iron filings to their preconceived destination 

Keep pointing your fingers at each other during this conflagration 

Bend over and conduct each other's proctological examination 

Chalk xenophobia off as yet another symptom of paranoia 

Along with ignorance and a host of other maladies for ya 

Each of which has lent its share of momentum to the foyer 

Setting off the perfect storm to immolate old growth sequoias 

Let this lesson remain clear in focus right before your eyes 

Withhold judgment instead of adding to the climate of lies

Pay closer attention before another swath of people dies

Consider this with your heart and you might just grow to be wise 

There's No Glass

  

     My glass isn't half full.  There is no glass.  I have a positive outlook. It's as simple as that. It doesn't mean I'm unaware of the tragedies blossoming on the planet.  I under stand there are many calamities plaguing Earth today. I'm mindful that an undue proportion of them are unnecessarily brought upon us by humankind.  

   The plastics accumulating in our oceans have reached critical mass. Polar bears are stranded on garbage piles as they're forced south due to climate change in search of food. Anyone with the ability to perceive a portion of the complexity going on in the world today can tell that humans play a key role in having exacerbated climate change. It leads me to wonder why so many people today seem to shrug it off, much less argue against it existing.  

    It doesn't take a pathological genius to put two and two together. We've got all kinds living here in our biosphere surviving every type of weather, be it emotional, psychological, or continental. We should ask ourselves if it's accidental that half the human race looks the other way while the rest step into the path of the storm to face it.  

   What I find most telling about all of this is there being no need to argue over whether anything in the world is influenced by us or not.  That's beside the point. Let's just pretend that climate change has nothing to do with humanity having caused it. Let's imagine that part of  climate change isn't brought on by the billions of human beings established all over the vast surface of this planet. Momentarily put aside the idea that countless generations of industrious pollution and continuous releasing of carbon dioxide green gas emissions had no effect whatsoever. The facts remain.  

   Even the climate change deniers should be the first to stand up to admit that mankind has wrested with the elements to produce lumber and housing and automobiles and every other product that eases us into the comforts of modern living.  So they should not have a problem with admitting that we possess the wherewithal and ingenuity to help protect ourselves and those in need from the ravages of an uncontrolled climate bent on spreading natural disasters anywhere in its path.  

   Let's cut to the chase. For them to deny we have anything to do with causing climate change seems rather disingenuous, amounting to evading the most pressing issue facing us. It's tantamount to admitting that humankind has stood helpless facing our environment since the beginning of time (an absurd assertion) or it conceals an inability (or lack of motivation) to do the right thing and step up to help ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and fellow citizen standing in the line of fire coming from rampaging weather and other natural environmental disasters to survive it together.  To allow ourselves to get into an argument as to what the definition of "natural" may be, while extremely powerful forces gather on the event horizon to massacre us, seems a bit telling.

   I find the idea that these so-called gung-ho types would backpedal away from such a challenge as that rather curious, considering their self promotion as fearless heroes. Are they really that terrified of the prospect of us pulling together to tame nature's savage assaults? Or could it be they just don't care about other people? Are they just as idiotic as anyone else, or maybe just not that smart?  Their baseless assertion, a monotonal mantra as mindlessly repeated as the chewing of a cow's cud, really comes as a surprise from people who in the same mid-chew will proclaim their own superiority as a race. 

   These climate-change deniers act as if we were never able to control the growth rates of forests, or set up dams to contain floods, or filter pure water out of the air, or do anything that the human race has proven itself capable of already.  These cowards act as if we haven't been lumberjacks sawing down old growth forests into timber with our bare hands for hundreds of years! As if we're helpless mites brainlessly afloat on a turbulent sea of an unmanageable climate. "If it's God's will to sweep us away then God's will it will be," they smirk beneath their transparent Halloween masks. All dressed up as normal people, good one!

   These folk who stick their necks out to argue climate change isn't man-made are not only missing the point, they're revealing their true colors for anyone with eyes to see.  They're all too happy to chalk up their menus on school blackboards and give credit to all of our species' various achievements, from inventing airplanes and satellites and drones to massive engineering spectacles like the Hoover dam, not to mention paved highways and railroads full steam ahead on across the range of technological accomplishments from mass-producing loads of factory-assembled plastics and toxic waste of every type all the way through modern weapons production to the latest computer controlled cryptographic AI programming to help the relationship with our invention and execution of the nuclear bomb.  

   Most of these triumphs of man's technical ingenuity come with their down-side, notably the mass-pollution and wholesale destruction of viable sections of our environment which, in case these staunch supporters of derring-do have forgotten (or never realized in the first place) is an ecosystem upon which all of us rely on to survive. They wear their black kettle masks with ever so much pride and denial. 

   Just what would we ever do without the red, white and blue? I don't know about you, but I'd be less amused and appalled online. "Amuled," I'll call it; a lurching sensation felt in the pit of one's stomach when confronted by the knee-jerk reaction of a self-serving pathological narcissist waving their dime-store nylon flags on social utility message board. Its a feeling much like that which you get from receiving the swift kick of a mule who can't control their outrageous reflexes. You know the type. Or maybe you are one of these braying human donkeys reading this. Whatever the case may be, your kind has been tagged and bagged right here for all to see. 
 
   It doesn't even matter anymore whether you reply in self-defense or just go on slinking by like the weak trolls you are. Don't you have more important things to do than waste your time trying to communicate your so-called ideas online? Go back to your house and protect your family from a home invasion or something. You got in way over your heads when you had to come up with a password to get on the internet. We're not on separate teams. Life's not like the Superbowl. Our glass isn't half empty or half full. 

   There is no glass. There's just poisoned drinking water coming out of the taps on fire because our elected masters used money to cheat and support fracking, dumb-ass. We're all being led like slaves in chains shackled together around the ankles and you don't even seem to know it. Programmed to respond to dumb memes like barking seals in a three ring circus. Rooting for your team like demented clowns bought and paid for by the corporations we serve. We're all in this boat together, we're each hypocritical to certain degrees like it or not, and we're all being shanghaied by the rich in disguise dressed in suits acting wise in the aisles of the church they all profit from.  

   Us against them, you against me, sick of each other watching too much TV.  Except we each have our own chosen dumb series of shows. Just because some of the others escape reality doesn't stop either of us from being pimped out like whores. It's time for us all to face it. We've been pitted against each other plain and simple, goodness knows. Sure I lash back fast and furious, just like the guy in the aisle standing next to me who wants to pierce through the armor of what he considers to be his confederate foes. All I can see across the aisle from me through this storm of rubber bullets and tear-gassed haze is hypocrisy staring right back at me in the face. 

   

   Because this bipartisan dream got bushwhacked so long ago we don't even remember how deep it all goes. Seventy years since world war two ended.  But after the cold war began everyone just pretended business as usual was simply alright when nothing could be further from the case. Just look in the mirror at the accident surrounding us. If you're wondering who caused it the answer's staring you in the face. Don't talk back cuz I looked into it too. Whose reflection do you think I saw? I'll give you a little clue. It was both me and you. 

   I'm trying to help us not fight each other, you see. That's all I've been trying to say. It's not like I sit here thinking my hands are clean and paid for, while yours are stinking of the grease  and blood shed down through the generations. I'm patriotic too, that's not just for proud boys and tea-baggers. You all act as if you own the place. How dare you spit in the face of people who just want to go through with this democracy?  This country was made for me and you. 

   What's more, there's enough honor to go around to cover everyone on the ground. That includes your run of the mill science teacher as much as it does your journeyman and hard working plumber. We're all in this together, from environmental service workers to doctors. Every link in the chain plays an integral part, so don't you dare try to throw it back again in our faces with your nebulous bible passages and short changed excuses.  

   We who appear to be on opposite sides of this political divide either work together to save ourselves from the planet, or we all die apart and buried in heaps of garbage in disgrace. Forget about that for one hot minute! Let's set aside our differences. There's some music we have all got to face. Together we stand, divided we fall. It was your side that sang this strongest of all. And now you're going to sit back and allow the politicians we all voted for fleece us blind while we tear out each other's throats? 

   

   Thanks a lot for doing your part without seeing the forest through the trees. The near sighted don't need glasses in order to see what's right in front of our faces. It's a shame our far sighted brothers have disgraced us by pointing at the enemy among us and confusing an entire demographic for themselves. This hasn't been written as a warning so much as a once lovelorn letter bidding a sad farewell without tears to the proud members of our tribe who got swallowed up from the inside over the years. I suppose in the end all we can do is pretend that nature won't balance out this equation. The true patriot knows that democracy will eventually come to rule this nation just as it was intended. We won't look back at this chapter in our history, we'll just be glad that it ended. We can rise above our differences to avoid going feral, or we can forget who betrayed us at our very own peril.  

                                                                                                                                      photos by Shaun Lawton 

HOLOGRAPHICON

Periodic pulses of alternating current

Ongoing up to date in circulation
Prevalent in the instant of the mainstream

The shade has elapsed down the corridor
Like an umbrella being drawn at the dawn
Once again we've spun away from the Sun
While being captured on a leash, its pawn

For the time being coming undone
Divining the state of the moment
Reallocating while now on the run
Heading off the revolution to foment

Periodic pulses of a domineering sequence
Continuing on through with its transmission
Frequently in the alternating exigent current 

Perfectly ubiquitous and transparent
The fish reflected in a curve slip by
Each one a former adherent
To being one scale in a suit of armor

Softly drowning lullaby
Bubbling under a viscous bay
Slippery when wet at the seams
Dreaming of finding the way

Through the slipstream we're nosing
In between sheets screaming to the wind
the Fall of the Circuit flashing exposure

calming in a sense we cannot pretend
achieving a true sense of erasure
we feel beginning here at the end
along the course of developing pleasure

the Empire of the Opticon
Saturnalia of all the rulers
As seen throughout the sprawl
Apparent to all of the users

We're plugged in to the holographicon
A delegation of representatives
Who have nothing to do with each other

Micro Chip (Monumental)

art by Prince Satyrn

 

Under the ridges of unfurled magnetic
schematics working their magic
in collective tides.

Rendered beyond the fringes
of the world stalking the tragic
on their retrospective rides.

Hallowed be thy presence
in the crowning wake of an eternal
sunrise on the other hand.

Of darkness let the rays cast down
be reminders illumination
may come from the obscured.

They say you have never seen darkness
like the one in the cave
who betrayed the light.

A blue jewel droplet forms for the one
who enters and then escapes
back from the void.

It is the smallest bead capturing
the inverted sky and mirroring
it in our own darkened eyes.

The multifaceted compound
eye of the panopticon
staring into itself
at every camera point.

Drowned into a yawning crevasse
unzipped along the stepping spine
of its own devising.

A factory's evolution
of reassembled parts
can never reach a fair
and balanced conclusion.

Sculptors For The Museum

I've always been thought of
as a really crazy boy
but now I've lost my noggin'
my favorite toy

They ain't seen crazy no how
til you know I've gone insane
There ain't no tellin'
What I'd do without my brain 

So help me find my mind
I left it around here somewhere
If you would be so kind
So I can reboot my software

A sympathetic hallelujah
a nod, a glance, a look
just an indication
we're in each other's book

Itself a collaboration
Woven of the moment
Strands of eternity
Building the past left
Behind as a monument

It Strikes Back

what is it about this life 
that doesn't dare allow itself 
to be cornered or jumped at 
in the middle of the night 
when all you're trying to do
is get a moment alone under 
the stars' light still being shed 
gently upon us every day and 
night of our lives so we can 
maybe be reminded of their 
whispering insistence that they 
were here just like us today 
to make the best of it before 
we're long gone and buried 
as a precognition of our own 
song left echoing before the 
wake of simmering lightning  
fades away altogether from 
the electromagnetic facade

Get It

It's hard to straddle the divide tearing you apart never can hide

I get it that's why you have to slide down one side or the other

My brother in agreement that we exist at the very least we insist

We don't get ahead of ourselves unless it's to further our agenda

In competition with each other we thrive and outshine the sun

That's the problem you see clearly failing to humble ourselves

Before the almighty electromagnetic confluence of energy

Cascading throughout us every moment of our living period